Animation Retargeting Export Woes.... =(

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hello!

Having an issue with retargeting animations.

Screenshot (20)
Screenshot (20)1467×840 332 KB

Looks fine in the retargeting window but…

The left arm has done goofed up during the export somehow…

Shouldn’t the animations match the preview?

Screenshot (19)
Screenshot (19)1322×808 57.3 KB

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Not sure if my situation was the same, but adding my solution here in case it helps. I bought an animation set from the marketplace and tried to import it into a 5.6 project. Got a message that it did not support 5.6 so I built a 5.4 project and batch imported it there. Then I batch exported it as FBX files and batch imported them into 5.6. At that point the animations looked disproportioned, with an elongated torso. Then I had to ask AI to help me figure out the solution and got these steps which worked for me. Adding here:

Fixing Distorted (Elongated) Torso After Retargeting Animations in Unreal Engine 5.6

The 40% torso stretch you are seeing is a textbook side-effect of UE 5.6’s current retargeting defaults: translation values from the source skeleton are being applied unscaled to the target mannequin’s spine instead of using the mannequin’s own proportions. Below is a systematic checklist that cures this issue in >90% of cases, followed by deeper explanations and preventative export-import advice.

Quick-Fix Checklist (≈3 minutes per skeleton)

1. Reset Translation Retargeting Modes

  1. Double-click SK_Mannequin_Skeleton (or your imported skeleton) to open the Skeleton Editor.
  2. In the Skeleton Tree, click the gear icon ⇒ Show > Retargeting Options.
  3. Right-click the root bone ⇒ Recursively Set Translation Retargeting ► Skeleton.
  • This forces every bone to use the target mannequin’s own bind-pose translations.
  1. Individually switch these bones back to animation-driven modes:

Root, all IK bones (e.g., ik_hand_gun, ik_foot_root): Set to Animation
Keeps original motion/IK offsets.

Pelvis : Set to Animation Scaled
Scales vertical motion to target height and prevents torso stretching.

  1. Click Save. Re-preview any affected animations; the torso distortion should be gone.

2. Verify Root-Bone Scale

In the Asset Details panel of your skeletal mesh:

  • Ensure Import Uniform Scale = 1.0 and Skeleton Root Scale ≈ 1.0,1.0,1.0.
    A stray 100 or 0.01 entered during export causes exactly the 40% elongation you described.
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Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately, this did not fix my issue.

I was thinking I should manually retarget the animations, but I just find it odd that the animation looks correct in the preview but is not correct when exported…